rm
Passport
- Family
- Shrimp and Yabbies
- Grows to
- 6 cm (2.4")
- Temperament
- Aggressive
- CareSuggested
- Beginner
- SwimsSuggested
- On the bottom
- Keep
- One is fine
- Water
- 24–30 °C (75–86 °F)
Care requirements
i
On record for Whisker Shrimp: adult size, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, carbonate hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level.
Not on record for Whisker Shrimp: lifespan, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 38 L / 10.0 US gal
- pH 6.5–8
- Hardness 2–14 dGH
- Carbonate hardness 1–8 dKH
- Diet algae eater/omnivore
Keeping notes
One on its own, or one male with a few females. Males fight, often to the death, and any of them will hunt dwarf shrimp, snails and small fish.
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Whisker shrimp are the reason "ghost shrimp" is a name worth distrusting. They look almost identical — translucent, cheap, sold from the same tanks — and they are a completely different animal with a completely different temperament.
Look at the arms. A whisker shrimp carries a pair of long, obvious front arms tipped with small claws, far longer in proportion than anything on a true ghost shrimp, plus a straight rostrum and a slight hump to the back. Those arms are working tools.
They will kill fish. Not scavenge dead ones — hunt and kill sleeping or slow tank mates, and small fish in particular. People buy a dozen as cleaners, lose their neon tetras one at a time over a month, and never work out why.
Tank setup
Give your whisker shrimp their own tank, or accept what they'll do in a shared one. That's the honest starting point with this species.
Provide dense cover and a lot of it. They're territorial with each other as well as with everything else, and every shrimp needs somewhere to retreat while its shell hardens after a moult. Wood, caves, dense planting and leaf litter all count.
They come from shallow, slow, weedy water across Southeast Asia — ponds, canals, paddy fields — and they're adaptable to almost anything a tank throws at them. Water chemistry is not where the difficulty lies.
Cover the tank. Large shrimp climb, and these are strong ones.
Feeding
Whisker shrimp are opportunistic omnivores and will eat anything they can hold, which includes algae, biofilm, detritus, pellets, and any animal slower than they are.
Feed them well and feed them protein. A hungry whisker shrimp is a hunting whisker shrimp, and keeping them fed is the only real moderation of their behaviour.
They feed most confidently after dark, so an evening feed reaches them better than a morning one.
Avoid: copper in anything, and avoid the assumption that they are a clean-up crew. They're a predator that also scavenges.
Filtration and flow
Ordinary filtration suits them and they tolerate a wide range of conditions. Gentle to moderate flow matches the still water they come from.
Guard intakes for the sake of any young, though adults are far too large to be at risk.
They're hardier than ornamental shrimp across the board — more tolerant of chemistry, of temperature and of a tank that isn't perfectly stable. That toughness is part of why they end up in shops as cheap feeders.
With plants
Whisker shrimp are safe with established plants and won't graze healthy growth.
They will uproot things. Those arms move substrate around and a newly planted stem gets dislodged, so give plants time to root or anchor them properly.
Dense planting is worth it anyway. It breaks up sightlines between shrimp and lowers the amount of squabbling.
Health
They're robust and rarely ill. Most losses are moulting failures or injuries from another whisker shrimp.
Watch them after a moult. A freshly moulted shrimp is soft and defenceless, and in this species its tank mates know it. Cover is what keeps them alive through that window.
Hardness matters for the shell, as with any shrimp. Very soft water gives you stuck moults regardless of how clean the tank is.
Breeding
Whisker shrimp breed readily in fresh water, unlike the amanos and filter feeders they share a shelf with. Females carry a large clutch of small eggs under the tail.
The larvae are free-swimming and small, and they need infusoria-grade food to get going. Enough of them survive in a heavily planted, fishless tank that a colony will establish itself without much help.
The adults eat their own young without hesitation. If you want numbers, the females need somewhere the larvae can drift out of reach — thick moss does the job.
Tank mates
Avoid14
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid reaches 15 cm and will eat adult Whisker Shrimp.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid reaches 15 cm and will eat adult Whisker Shrimp.
- Kribensis Kribensis reaches 8 cm and will eat adult Whisker Shrimp.
- Oscar Oscar reaches 35 cm and will eat adult Whisker Shrimp.
- Panda Garra Panda Garra reaches 9 cm and will eat adult Whisker Shrimp.
Only with care32
- Least Killifish Whisker Shrimp is aggressive and Least Killifish is peaceful.
- Scarlet Badis Whisker Shrimp is aggressive and Scarlet Badis is peaceful.
- Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid Whisker Shrimp is a risk to Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid: shrimp and yabbies and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Angelfish Whisker Shrimp is a risk to Angelfish: angelfish and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
- Bala Shark Whisker Shrimp is a risk to Bala Shark: sharks and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 61 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 1 species is not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.